mapped drives refreshing constantly
Hi, I am an intern, and my boss and I are really stuck. Our office is running a peer-to-peer style network. We have written batch files to run on startup of any computer that needs to connect to the servers (which are all various linux). The servers are set up properly to share with windows clients. Batch file lines are as such: net use H: \\Server\HomeDirectory/user:username password This works on all of our XP machines, but for some reason the new Windows 7 machines are constantly refreshing and losing connection to the mapped drives to one particular server. I have tried replacing the network driver directly from the company's website (Nvidia), mapping it through the GUI, using net use persistent:yes, but nothing seems to work. I can't find anyone else having this problem. We thought it was an application confliction (facetwin is installed on the server we are having this issue with), but we installed facetwin onto one of the Windows 7 machines, and it still hasn't worked. Facetwin is an alternative to PuTTY that we used in the building for some time, and it is still used in areas. I can't remove the program from the server, but I don't think this is the problem. P.S. My boss purchased Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit) for these machines instead of Pro. His 7 Pro machine is having the same problem, though.
July 22nd, 2010 5:37pm

Since you're not running on a domain, the difference between Windows 7 Home Premium and Window 7 Pro is irrelevant. I take it you're running Samba on the Linux machines for file sharing to Windows? Check your versions and make sure you have the latest one for each distro. You may also have to tweak the NTLM settings in the Windows 7 registry. Do a Google search for "windows 7 lmcompatibilitylevel" for more information.
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 22nd, 2010 7:01pm

Thanks for the quick response, and I'm sorry I'm so slow in mine. I'll verify samba is up to date and try tweaking the registry files and post back for anyone else with the same problem if it works.
July 28th, 2010 5:12pm

Another option you may want to pursue if that doesn't work is to perform an Anytime Upgrade (not free, unfortunately) to Windows 7 Ultimate. Then you can use Linux's native NFS sharing instead of Samba. There may also be 3rd-party apps that give NFS client capabilities to the other versions of Windows 7.
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 28th, 2010 10:14pm

I would love to have 7 ultimate, but the company I work for does not want to spend the money for the upgrade. I'll look for the 3rd party apps because tweaking the registry didn't work, and samba is up to date. I have found a few other things in forums that I want to try as well.
July 29th, 2010 3:57pm

Something else you might want to consider as a workaround - since you've got some XP boxes and they seem to be working you could try this (it's not a permanent fix): Download Services for Unix 3.5 (SFU) from Microsoft (it's free) and install it on one of the XP machines. SFU has a feature called NFS Gateway which basically allows you to mount a UNIX NFS share into an empty folder on a Windows machine and reshare it as a Windows share. Unfortunately, SFU won't install on Vista or Windows 7. Three caveats though: 1. I've used this successfully on a Windows 2003 Server, so I know it works, but I'm not positive that Gateway for NFS will work on XP; you'll need to do a bit of research. If you have a Windows 2003 Server then this isn't an issue 2. If it does work, you're limited by the number of connections that XP supports (5 or 10, I don't remember which). Once again, with Windows Server number of connections aren't a problem. 3. Now you've got 4 sets of permissions to keep track of: UNIX, NFS, NTFS and Share. Get one wrong and the whole thing falls apart.
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 29th, 2010 4:47pm

This topic is archived. No further replies will be accepted.

Other recent topics Other recent topics